Why Is Ferguson’s City Leadership Not Racially Representative?

People attend the Peace Fest music festival in Forest Park on August 24, 2014 in St. Louis, Missouri.

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Protests in Ferguson, Mo., over the killing of an unarmed African-American teenager by police have highlighted a powerful political dynamic in the working-class suburb: Though Ferguson is heavily African American, its city leaders are nearly all white. Just one of the city’s six council members is black.

Saturday’s Journal looked at how blacks have moved into the city in recent decades while whites have left. In 1970 in Ferguson, there were just a few hundred black residents in the city of about 21,000. Blacks made more than half the population by 2000 and two-thirds by 2010, according to Census figures. Since 2000, the number of whites living in Ferguson has fallen by 40%.

But unlike in other communities, the rising numbers of African American residents hasn’t translated into black political power. “It has been majority black for quite a few years, and yet the white minority is very much in control,” said Kenneth Warren, a political science professor at Saint Louis University.

One analysis of local governments, by Jessica Trounstine and the University of California, Merced, found that the racial split between Ferguson’s residents and its elected officials was one of the most extreme in the country.
What’s behind the dynamic? For one, voter turnout is low in municipal contests. Only around 1,500 voters turned out in the city’s most recent council race last year, or around 10% of the city’s voting-age eligible population. In 2011, one councilman won his seat with just 72 votes.

Amid the low participation in voting, local officials and analysts say, the presence of African Americans in the electorate is especially low.

Whites who have remained in the city tend to be part of families with deep roots in the community and who have been in the area a long time. They also tend to be homeowners, who vote more than renters. The city’s African American population tends to be younger and less established than the city’s older, white homeowners. Some lower-income African Americans tend to live on federal-housing aid and move more often.

“Those people don’t typically vote because they are more transient,” says Russell Gunn, a former state representative whose district included part of Ferguson. Mr. Gunn is African American.

Political scientists say two key institutional factors have also kept voter turnout low for municipal contests. First, local elections occur in April, apart from state and federal contests that might generate higher turnout. They’re also nonpartisan, which means that get-out-the-vote efforts are less common than in races in which political parties are promoting candidates. That makes younger, more transient residents less likely to vote.

City leaders have been aware for years of the lack of minority representation. In 2007, Ferguson’s council members tapped Dwayne James, an African American who served on a zoning board, to fill a vacant position on the council. The city actively recruited Mr. James for the slot, said Terry Jones, political science professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Indeed, one challenge is that few African Americans have filed to run for office. Younger and newer residents are less likely to have ties to traditional civic groups that are politically active—labor unions, school boards, business groups, and fraternal organizations, though they may have ties to churches.

“The usual ways that people start out participating, they are still white-dominated,” said Ms. Parikh.

Mr. Gunn describes a chicken-and-egg problem. African Americans aren’t running for office, because they don’t have a deep support network, and they don’t have that network because more haven’t run for office. “Some people feel so disenfranchised, they wonder what good it is going to do,” he said.

One outcome of the recent police protests is that African Americans could become more engaged in local politics. “What I’m praying for is that there are a number of young people that are out there that are trying to organize and get people registered to vote,” says Mr. Gunn.

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